The Devil’s Dictionary
Vox Day here ponders the odd Eleven Commandments of Progressivism, here propounded by that Moses of the Left, Elizabeth Warren.
Allow me to introduce my own translation from Newspeak to English:
1. “We believe that Wall Street needs stronger rules and tougher enforcement, and we’re willing to fight for it.”
Translation: We want the benefits of a free market system, but without banks and speculation and other financial institutions we neither understand nor trust, despite that they benefit us. We are willing to fight because we are, at the root, riotous, tumultuous, and uncivilized, as evidenced by the fact that (see above) we neither understand nor trust financial institutions.
Because we are chumps, we do not know that stronger enforcement actually leads to bribes via campaign contributions, regulatory capture, and incest between big government and big business. We are being played for patsies by establishing a type of socialist syndicate state fitliest called fascism, which our ideals allegedly oppose more vehemently than anything else in our dogma.
2.”We believe in science, and that means that we have a responsibility to protect this Earth.”
Translation: We believe in Junk Science, because our brains are filled with mush. Environmentalism is easier than communism to serve as a basis for dismantling the institutions of civilization we neither understand nor trust, despite that they benefit us.
We are also willing and eager to be distracted by completely imaginary and fictional dangers in large things no one can possible influence one way or the other, like the weather, as this makes it easier to ignore, blithely, blindly, and with gooselike foolishness, real dangers from real threats our dogmas do not allow us to recognize, such as international terrorism, and, before that, international communism.
3 “We believe that the Internet shouldn’t be rigged to benefit big corporations, and that means real net neutrality.”
Additionally, we neither understand nor trust the Internet, freedom of speech, or free trade. We also invent meaningless bafflegab like ‘Net Neutrality’ to hide, even from our own brains filled with mush, the true meaning of our policy goals, which is the abolition of freedom of speech and trade.
Because our brains are filled with mush, we are willing to believe conspiracy theories about sinister big business tycoons dressed like Rich Uncle Pennybags from the Monopoly game secretly organizing the Internet to benefit themselves. This, despite the overwhelming number of liberals, leftists, and far-left nutcases running most large corporations.
4 “We believe that no one should work full-time and still live in poverty, and that means raising the minimum wage.”
We also neither understand nor trust the simplest conclusions of economics, a science now over 230 year old, and so we do not understand the law of supply and demand. Since our brains are filled with mush, we believe that throwing unskilled workers out of work somehow benefits them. Since we are unaware that Union thugs have automatic pay raises tied to minimum wage, any raise in the minimum wage is nothing but cynical political payola from Dem politicos to Dem henchmen and thugs. Because were are unaware of this, we are chumps. The fact that we assume an annoying note of highminded moral smugness while being played for chumps makes us pathetic.
5 “We believe that fast-food workers deserve a livable wage, and that means that when they take to the picket line, we are proud to fight alongside them.”
A repeat of the same point given above, adding an expression of our love of violence and hatred for civilized means of settling disputes.
6 “We believe that students are entitled to get an education without being crushed by debt.”
Again, merely an expression of total and blithering ignorance that the law of supply and demand applies to services, such as teaching, as well as to realty and personal goods.
When we assert a right to something someone else must provide, our mush filled brains perhaps do not realize that this is asserting a right to force another man by means of the law to provide it. It is a right to invade another man’s rights. It is a demand to rob Peter to pay Paul disguised under the bafflegab language of rights. The fact that this is a paradox does not deter us. Logic is useful only to men without mush for brains.
It also shows we have not been paying the least attention to the economics behind student loans and college tuition for the last seventy-five years, or perhaps it shows that we do not know why government interference in these two markets is raising the prices in both cases.
7 “We believe that after a lifetime of work, people are entitled to retire with dignity, and that means protecting Social Security, Medicare, and pensions.”
Again, merely an expression of total and blithering ignorance about all matters economical. It is a demand for a free lunch, a demand for something for nothing, which, as above, is a demand to rob Peter to pay Paul. If this demand is directed to the federal government, it is also an expression of total and blithering ignorance about all matters Constitutional.
8 “We believe—I can’t believe I have to say this in 2014—we believe in equal pay for equal work.”
Again, an expression of total and blithering ignorance about all matters economical, but this time combined with a conspiracy theory paranoia concerning an outrageous lie.
If women were actually paid less than men for equal work, any entrepreneur in any field could make himself rich by hiring women and no men. He could even pay the women more than the going women’s wage but less than the going men’s wage for that given job, and put the difference in his pocket. He could also any out of work men willing to work at that wage rather than at a man’s wage. Any other entrepreneur unwilling to being undercut in price and outsold would be under a strong incentive to follow suit or risk going out of business.
This lie is so utterly disconnected from reality and so easy to disprove, that it is nigh impossible to believe any of the partisans of the Left actually believes it. Most likely it is a merely a verbal formula, like the lies Communist countries require all their peoples to say to each other without the least expectation that anyone believes it. Why they volunteer to engage in this humiliating behavior of being forced to utter lies which neither the speaker nor hearer is likely to believe is incomprehensible. It is the mystery of evil.
9 “We believe that equal means equal, and that’s true in marriage, it’s true in the workplace, it’s true in all of America.”
The assertion here is either insolently meaninglessness or insolent self contradiction. All men are equal in the eyes of the law in America and have been for some time.
What the mush heads are demanding is in equality. That would not poll well, so they demand inequality in the name of equality. They demand special privileges for women and minorities, double standards, quotas, and the wholesale rejection of biological and legal reality in terms of marriage, so that neurotic perverts can pretend to be married. The demand the use of the force of law to compel the Catholic Church to play along with their sick, neurotic sexual aberrations.
10 “We believe that immigration has made this country strong and vibrant, and that means reform.”
The assertion here is so gassy, I cannot tell what it means. ‘Reform’ is merely a whitenoise word which can mean whatever it needs to mean. Here, I assume it means total amnesty and the abolition of the Southern border.
11 “And we believe that corporations are not people, that women have a right to their bodies.”
Again, this means using the force of law to compel the Catholic Church to help you murder your babies in the womb, or artificially sterilize your women, and play along with your sick, neurotic, sexual aberrations.
And yet again, a blithering ignorance of economics is now combined with a blithering ignorance of law. Corporations have always been corporate persons in the meaning of the law, that is what the word ‘corporation’ means. That is why you can be hired by a corporation rather than hired personally by the chief officer who is not personally liable for your pay. That is why corporations, not the chief officer personally, owns the reality and stock. And so on.
The law in this case is not only Constitutional law, but an act designed to secure religious freedoms seriously under threat, and for which the Democrats voted overwhelmingly during the Clinton Administration. The law does not deny any woman any so-called right to her body, it merely means you cannot force the Pope to pay for your abortion-inducing drugs.
Now, no one in his right wits could possibly honestly confuse (1) a woman’s body being violated by a law which denies her an ownership right in it and (2) a woman being denied the insolent and unlawful ability, enacted by an arbitrary and unelected bureaucrat pursuant to a clearly unconstitutional law jammed illegally through the Congress, to force the Pope to pay for a drug to kill her baby in the womb. This means either that the Leftroids are not in their right wits, or that they are not honest, or some combination of both: as a dishonest demagogue whipping a mentally unbalanced mob of semi-criminal neurotics into a frenzy with words that mean the direct opposite of what they pretend to mean.
To sum up, translating all this from bafflegab and craptalk to English, it means three things (1) the Left are parochial, and only regard the issues of the current news cycle as being principles (2) the Left hates civilization and all its institutions (3) the Left hates the Catholic Church, and will destroy itself attempting to destroy her.
Regarding this last point, allow me to say on behalf of the one, true, catholic and apostolic Church that better men than you, leftwing nutbag, far better men, such as the potent and remorseless Imperators of Rome tried that.
We are here. They are gone. Soon — as we count time — you will be gone.
About John C Wright
John C. Wright is a practicing philosopher, a retired attorney, newspaperman, and newspaper editor, and a published author of science fiction. Once a Houyhnhnm, he was expelled from the august ranks of purely rational beings when he fell in love; but retains an honorary title.
